Pictures of Marcus Miller often show him wearing what is almost a trademark porkpie hat. Truth is, the extraordinary musician wears many hats, some of them simultaneously.

He's proven himself a master of the electric bass in any setting from jazz to pop to funk to R&B, always with a rich, soulful sound. He's also a stellar producer and arranger, having been involved in a variety of projects for stars and megastars including Miles Davis, Luther Vandross, Roberta Flack, Wayne Shorter, Al Jarreau, Kenny Garrett and many more. His composing skills have been on display through many of those artists and on his own recordings.

Then there's the movie scores, which started with 1990's "House Party" and blossomed into an impressive list of films starring folks like Chris Rock, Eddie Murphy, Keenan Ivory Wayans, Halle Berry and Matthew Perry. He spent a dozen years as a studio musician warrior, contributing his superb bass skills on more than 400 records for the likes of Joe Sample, McCoy Tyner, Mariah Carey, Paul Simon, Elton John, Aretha Franklin, Roberta Flack, Frank Sinatra, and LL Cool J and so many more. (Often doing session after session with little or no break).

He's a Grammy winner. Hell, he's a winner. Period.

Miller, as affable as he is intelligent, handles it all during a time when the music industry and recording industry are in a state of flux, to say the least, as major recording labels and the "old way" of doing things become increasingly insignificant and musicians both fret and wonder about how it all will settle out. Toss in the rigors of touring, as well as raising a family (four children), and it's enough to fill more than one plate. But Marcus Miller spins around the sun and rotates on his axis despite the industry maelstrom. He wears all of his hats exceedingly well.

"You've got to be efficient and you've got to have people helping you to keep your schedule together so you don't drop all those eggs you juggle.," says Miller, 48, a New York City native transplanted to the Los Angeles area.

Out of it all comes his latest project, a CD on which his aim is to show different sides to the music within him, providing a vision of where he stands today. It's titled simply Marcus, self-produced on the 3 Deuces label and distributed via Concord Records. It was recorded about a year ago and released in foreign markets last year. It hit the U.S. in March.

Miller took time out in April to discuss his recording and career from his LA-area home, where he hoping at the time that the UCLA Bruins would do his city proud in the NCAA men's basketball Final Four. (Sorry, Marcus). He's proud of the new CD and was about to start touring in support of it and was deep into the never-ending process of promoting it. All the while he's looking ahead, with a new CD partially complete already; this one a bass album teaming him with Stanley Clarke and Victor Wooten. He even hinted that some time in the future people may be hearing him a bit on acoustic bass.

"I do a broad range of things," he says about the new disk. "This one I decided to open it up a little bit more. On this one, you hear some jazz and R&B and some spoken word. A little bit of everything. I thought it was time to show people a little bit more of what I'm about and I thought that might be a good way to do it is to name it Marcus. This is where I'm at."

Indeed, there is a range of influences on the record, with guests including Keb' Mo,' Corrine Bailey and David Sanborn.

"With Keb' Mo,' he was my neighbor in my studio. He was down the street. We'd be running back and forth borrowing guitar picks and stuff like that," explains Miller. "We were always threatening to do something together. I thought this would be a good project to work together on something. I called him and said, 'Come over, man. I wrote a track. ("Milky Way.") Come listen to it.' He said, 'Man, this track sounds like it's from outer space .'

"With Corrine, I was in the middle of recording the project and I heard her voice on the radio. She was singing her hit, 'Girls Put Your Records On.' I was so struck by the uniqueness of her voice. So many voices in pop and R&B sound so similar. To hear something that jumped pout at me was really exciting. I reached out to Corrine to see if she would be interested in doing something together. That's how it happened."

Others are regulars in Millers band, except for Sanborn, with whom Miller has recorded many times over the years. "I was working on a couple songs and said, 'Dave would be great for this.' I don't really try to put somebody on [a project] for their name. I put them on because as I'm working on the music, I can imagine their sound. The music dictates it more than, 'I'd like to have this guy's name on the album.'"